Dead Man's Footsteps

boyfriend, by downing an entire packet of paracetamol. On each occasion Dr Hunter had come to the hospital and stayed with Caitlin until he knew she was out of danger. He didn’t have to do that, but that was the kind of man he was.
    And now the door was opening, and he was coming in. A tall, elegant figure in a pin-striped suit, with fine posture, he had a handsome face, framed with wavy salt-and-pepper hair, and gentle, caring eyes, at this moment partially concealed by half-frame tortoiseshell glasses, giving him more the air of an academic than a medic.
    ‘Lynn!’ he said, his strong, brisk voice oddly subdued this morning. ‘Come on in.’
    Dr Ross Hunter had two different expressions for greeting his patients. His normal, genuinely warm, happy-to-see-you smile, was the only one Lynn had ever seen in all the years that she had been his patient. She had never before encountered his wistful, biting-of-the-lower-lip grimace. The one he kept in the closet and hated to bring out.
    The one he had on his face today.

3
    It was a good place for a speed trap. Commuters hurrying into Brighton who regularly drove down this stretch of the Lewes Road, just east of Coldean Lane, knew that although it was a forty mile an hour limit they could accelerate safely after the lights and not have to slow down again along the dual carriageway until they reached the speed camera, almost a mile on.
    The blue, yellow and silver markings of the BMW estate car, parked in a side road and partially obscured from drivers’ view by a bus shelter, came as an unwelcome early-morning surprise to most of them.
    PC Tony Omotoso stood on the far side of the car, holding the laser gun, using the roof as a rest, aiming the red dot at the front number plates, which gave the best reading on any vehicle he estimated to be speeding. He clicked the trigger on the plate of a Toyota saloon. The digital readout said 44 mph. The driver had spotted them and already hit the brakes. He allowed a tolerance of ten per cent over the limit, plus two. The Toyota carried on past, its brake lights glowing. Next he sighted on the plates of a white Transit van: 43 mph. Then a black Harley Softail motorbike sped past, going way over the limit, but he wasn’t able to get a fix in time.
    Standing to his left, ready to jump out with his hands up the moment Tony called out, was his fellow road policing officer, PC Ian Upperton, tall and thin, in his cap and yellow high-visibility jacket. Both men were freezing.
    Upperton watched the Harley. He liked them – he liked all bikes, and his ambition was to become a motorcycle officer. But Harleys were cruising bikes. His real passion was for the high-speed road-racer machines, like BMWs, Suzuki Hayabusas, Honda Fireblades. Bikes where you had to lean into bends in order to get round them, not merely turn the handlebars like a steering wheel. A red Ducati was going past now, but the rider had spotted them and slowed almost to a crawl.
    But the clapped-out-looking green Fiesta coming up in the outside lane clearly had not.
    ‘The Fiesta!’ Omotoso called out. ‘Fifty-two!’
    PC Upperton stepped out and signalled the car over. But whether blindly or wilfully, the car shot past.
    ‘OK, let’s go. Whiskey, Four-Three-Two, Charlie Papa November.’
    He jumped behind the wheel.
    ‘Fuckers!’
    ‘Yeah, cunts!’
    ‘Why don’t you go chasing real criminals, right?’
    ‘Yeah, ’stead of fuckin’ persecuting motorists.’
    Tony Omotoso turned his head and saw two youths slouching past, one in a hoodie, the other in a shell suit with a baseball cap the wrong way round.
    Because three thousand five hundred people die on the roads of England every year, against five hundred a year who are murdered, that’s why , he wanted to say to them. Because me and Tony scrape dead and broken bodies off the roads every damned day of the week, because of jerks like this asshole in the Fiesta.
    But he didn’t have time. His colleague already had the blue roof spinners flashing and the siren whup-whooping. He tossed the expensive laser gun onto the back seat,climbed in the front, slammed the door, and began tugging his seat belt on, as Upperton gunned the car out into a gap in the traffic and floored the accelerator.
    And now the adrenalin was kicking in as he felt the thrust of acceleration in the pit of his stomach, and his spine pressed against the rear of the seat. Oh yes, this was one of the highs of the job.
    And the Automatic